What ever happened to the way our legal system used to work... where the guilty party didn't get to choose their own punishment? If all crime worked this way...:
Pedophile: I hereby sentence myself as a sears child photographer!
Vandalism: I hereby sentence myself to work painting wall murals!
Rapist: Damn you all! I sentence myself to be a pornographic film star!
Serial Killer: Ah ha! A punishment! I sentence myself to 10 years in service of the islamic jihad!
It just seems like a ridiculous attempt at law, you know, to let microsoft pick how it's going to be punished. Or, wait, they can bribe the judges:)
I think a lot of internet junkies are still wary because they're decent business-people too, and this being the case, the reason people distrust online banks and payment services are their apparent lack of physical stuff.
When you go into a regular bank, you look around and see they have pretty lightbulbs, nice counters, poorly decorated walls, and all sorts of plush chairs and things. They've even got those little pens. Other people are waiting inside. These things make you *want* to be there.
A website might be real, real pretty, but that doesn't have any physical worth. When I step into a pretty bank, I know that my money is probably going to be secure because in the worst case senario, they've got physical stuff to back my loan with. While this doesn't have practical application in the real world, this is a large part of how our brain percieves things.
Paypal is dubious because they've got nothing to look at. Sure, they've got a big customer base, but *where is* paypal, and who runs the thing? I think the digital world is still evolving in that we still can't estimate worth by a website. I hope we can in the future.
a single percent of it's total capacity right now.
What does that mean? It's not even using up, in almost all cases, any more than a 1Gbps line would be using. Take a look at all that blue on the map. It seems to signify that this was a waste of time and money.
Basically, I'm all for this great stuff, but until they find a use for it, it's just money wasted when it could be going to places and projects in technology that could actually benefit.
Does anyone remember when Restriction Enzymes were all the rage in molecular biology (which wasn't really even a field back then)?
They were actually banned in Cambridge, MA (home of Harvard and MIT) during the 70s, and now they are used in my Biology Lab courses to teach us how DNA seperates in agarose gel electrophoresis.
Point being: Don't jump to stupid conclusions about the dangers of things.
Are they actually going to make this a Politically Correct type of movie? A Terminatrix? Or did they just need a reason for a sex scene?
It just seems funny. The first movie had an obvious heroine and hero; they both served their roles and made the audience happy by creating a loving relationship while also doing neat action sequences and screaming as a strange, mechanized killer attacked them. But this?
Possible Plot:
Terminatrix Seduction:
The entire plot of the movie rests in the fact that a 20-something male, as commented in the article, has absolutely no power over his... organs... and will fall easily into the hands of an incredily beautiful woman who asks him on a rather cordial date. I don't see how she could lose with this strategy.
Terminatrix-PC:
A new black Conner (to try to promote gender equality) is paired with Jackie Chan and Arnold Schwartz to provide the ultimate in "inclusive" casting. The Terminatrix will have the ability to morph into whatever type of socially unrepresented class happens to present itself, allowing for quick and easy resolution of unsatisfied audience demographic.
You set up a simple script that by default, turns off accepting email with attachments on it. When a person in the company NEEDS to view an attachment, the script allows one email with an attachment through to his computer after he fills out a form and submits it to the script (the form is never actually read, but hmph).
This way, anyone who needs to see an attachment does and must know about it before hand. At the same time, it blocks attachment-outlook-stupidity viruses by disallowing them to shoot through the system on a normal basis.
Furthermore, any person IN THE COMPANY who sends an attachment to another person in the company that's rejected by the mail server because the recipient hadn't filled in the form has his or her email account locked for 24 hours to stop the virus from spreading.
You know, there was a kid who sat at my lunchtable and babbled incessantly about Linux and his "Linux box". I think he sat home all day and hacked it, which, in laymans terms, means he tried to break into his own system and failed. Sounds poor, if you ask me.
No, but really. Anyone who's tried to teach me the larger part of linux commands has taught me in "code form". In other words, they've tried to teach me how to do everything through the console, and what's worse, they try to add their own, new "terms" for them. A "Flood Ping" is suddenly a "Hurricane River Overflowing of Packets", and you casually ask them what EITHER of them are, and the kid tells you that he's talking about sending large amounts of binary data through his umbilical cord into an unsuspecting system. Right.
I think that schools should consider hiring IT professionals who can teach as well as do IT. It might open up a whole new market of jobs. Open Source software would be a great class, if anyone ever got around to TEACHING it.
There's nothing long with Editing something as long as your approve of the rest of it. As soon as you edit something, you've "agreed" that you're taking out material that you, the editor, finds unworthy of your publication - be it a weblog, a book, a magazine, or a television show.
Because of this, the remaining portion is now just as much your work as it is theirs. It's like touching just a single paintbrush to the Mona Lisa: while you can't claim you've painted the Mona Lisa, you could claim that you've done "art". In essense, by altering it, you've created something else, and that represents you and your views.
Now then, back to your blog. I say that no one could hold you libel for posts you didn't edit, but then, there's a problem - namely - that people against the material on your site can ask why you didn't exercise the right to edit the material, and claim that everything represents your opinion if you have the ability to edit and aren't exercising that ability.
Does anyone remember going to school in the late 80s, 90s?
Everyone was using an Apple computer to do everything. Everyone learned the Apple Operating System. My parents bought an apple computer so we could do our homework at home. It was our first "PC". This is because apple *donated* the hardware and the software.
But actually, this is what microsoft is trying to do. They're going to donate computers and software and teach children, the new-generation consumer base, to learn their operating system. It's a difficult thing, to unlearn an environment. An operating system is an environment. Microsoft is directly manipulating a ruling.
Actually, I can't say that it would be illegal in a "bar", but in a cybercafe environment, by law in MA at least, you're required to have internet filtering which blocks nudity and other "offensive" content. In a restricted, over 21 environment, perhaps this isn't such an issue, but in a mall or a place with any sort of store window, police complaints and actual orders to shut your business down can be handed out with very little discrimination. I know, I net-admined one for a year.
My friend and I recieved, on one occasion, a visit from the local police department, concerning that children had acceess to our machines and that our machines could be set to display objectionable content. The woman who had filed the complaint did not actually see objectionable content or had an experience where her child did, she merely voiced the possibility that it could happen.
Police seem to take this sort of stuff seriously. I'm not sure why it's any surprise that a government particularly against free speech would have a slightly more aggrevated reaction.
Why wouldn't Osama bin Laden or other said terrorists *disconnect* his computer?
*gasp!* The internet isn't some kind of otherworldly computing neccessity. Your computer runs perfectly fine if you unplug it from the wall. This seems to be like something George Bush would try to do (make a network secure but hire people that run it).
In any case, sure, unplugging your computer would limit its use as a communicative device, but lookie here. What if the computer was routed through a server that only accepted packets of a certain size with a certain encryption standard. In other words, Mr. Evil-Doer's packets go through, the FBIs dont.
This seems like an incredible waste of time. I've got a better idea to shut down telecommunications in Afghanistan et al:
Hit the data transfer at the heart. Screw with the routers and the servers. Sniff there. Individual computers are a ridiculous place to look.
What he's asking for is like asking for poison-free food. Sure, the ovens can be locked and the food can be tested over and over, but the cook is still there.
The only concievable way to do this is to either:
a) Eliminate Government Data Access to All But the Highest Officials (which still poses the same problem, in theory) or
b) Eliminate the network altogether.
Bush is asking for something that isn't possible because social engineering and the "inside job" is the oldest way to hack any system of anything. Hacking didn't start with computers, bank vaults, locks, jewelry stashes... they were all done in the past with inside work.
It's impossible because of human error and human presence.
Why Start In Winter? - And Why Sporting News on /.
on
Rowing Across the Atlantic
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
What's the purpose of starting in winter? Or are they rowing in the Southern Hemisphere? Even so, this seems like a stupid idea.
Rowing over a major ocean during the end of storm season through winter is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. I wish they would think before they do stuff like this.
But I suppose the contestants, I suppose that's what you'd call them, get some sort of rush out of doing crap like this. I just don't understand what kind of rush it is.
Furthermore, I don't understand why sporting news belongs on/., but that's another story.
Supposing OnStar can track where your car is, can't it also track acceleration and velocity and all that? I mean, supposing there's a sale at a Bob's Stores. It flashes the Ad.
Now, supposing you slow down and turn into the Bob's Stores parking lot. OnStar, technically, could save this information as specific to your vehicle. An entry in their big database that says "Customer 84392 will respond to advertising in this catagory."
What it all seems like is one big cyber-snoop service, tracking where you really are and advertising towards your patterns. A waste of car battery just like the new limewire ads are a waste of processing power.
Now, OnStar could say they won't do this, but you know it'll happen. It's a perfect advertising scheme. They'd know exactly what kind of driver and shopper you were dependant on what stores and advertisements you listened to and responded to.
Could industries like bookmakers or publishers use this sort of thing? I'm rather fond of the glowing text on the black background, if you ask me, and it would provide a great alternative to something like a reading light. of course, it'll probably jack the cost of books up. Even though they do claim it'll be "inexpensive".
However, I do think their assumption about 'computer monitors' is silly - right now, they're printing flat pictures, not moving, highly detailed ones.
Personally, I don't buy the article because it doesn't tell which computers failed the tests. Somehow, I doubt there's any sensitive, highly classified information stored on 95% of government computers - most government workers simply don't have access to that type of data or knowledge.
I'm scared at the fact that someone could report on this with so little attention to detail. It's an article simply designed to scare people into thinking that the US government isn't more prepared than they are.
Or you could use Sarin nerve gas, which inhibits nerve firing, and works every time.
Personally, I don't see the point of nanobots. They're hard to make, they're expensive to make, and they're useless when compared with similar toxins or biochemical agents.
Nerve gas kills invariably, almost instantly. I don't understand why a terrorist would use something else.
Has anyone read 'Snowcrash'? One of the characters has a car-plane-automated-mobile that works this way, he has to make odd sounds to make it move. Claims it doesn't interfere with his normal conversation too much, and that he can do it without thinking after a little practice.
And then, what about the environmental problems with re-introducing species into environments they obviously can't survive in?
Of course, this isn't neccessarily true, but most species go extinct for a reason. If an animal can't get the food it needs, it isn't going to survive no matter how many times you clone it and make it an animal again. And then, here's another problem: It wont have a parent to imitate.
Most species have their own quirks, I assume, and since everything in life is learned post-birth, would a DoDo bird that lives with a Peacock and has Dodo bird physiology really be a Dodo bird? Would it learn 'Peacock' responses to things?
I'm at Tufts University in Medford, MA.
We have sets of core requirements, such as language, sciences, english, math, technology, and others, but only for Liberal Arts. Engineering students have a different set of requirements, focused more around technology, math, and, well, engineering;)
That all said, I think it's notable that Engineering Students take Engineering Classes and Usually have an 'Engineering Oriented' job. On the other hand, Liberal Arts students often get a job in a field that doesn't neccessarily correspond to their major, and this, I believe is the philosophy behind a 'rounded' education.
This idea that one might go to college simply to become educated - not educated in a particular field - is more the goal behind college in a Liberal Arts education today. Although each student takes a concentration of courses to form a major, all students must diversify themselves and broaden their horizons.
Slashdot Mirror
What ever happened to the way our legal system used to work... where the guilty party didn't get to choose their own punishment? If all crime worked this way...:
:)
Pedophile: I hereby sentence myself as a sears child photographer!
Vandalism: I hereby sentence myself to work painting wall murals!
Rapist: Damn you all! I sentence myself to be a pornographic film star!
Serial Killer: Ah ha! A punishment! I sentence myself to 10 years in service of the islamic jihad!
It just seems like a ridiculous attempt at law, you know, to let microsoft pick how it's going to be punished. Or, wait, they can bribe the judges
I think a lot of internet junkies are still wary because they're decent business-people too, and this being the case, the reason people distrust online banks and payment services are their apparent lack of physical stuff.
When you go into a regular bank, you look around and see they have pretty lightbulbs, nice counters, poorly decorated walls, and all sorts of plush chairs and things. They've even got those little pens. Other people are waiting inside. These things make you *want* to be there.
A website might be real, real pretty, but that doesn't have any physical worth. When I step into a pretty bank, I know that my money is probably going to be secure because in the worst case senario, they've got physical stuff to back my loan with. While this doesn't have practical application in the real world, this is a large part of how our brain percieves things.
Paypal is dubious because they've got nothing to look at. Sure, they've got a big customer base, but *where is* paypal, and who runs the thing? I think the digital world is still evolving in that we still can't estimate worth by a website. I hope we can in the future.
a single percent of it's total capacity right now.
What does that mean? It's not even using up, in almost all cases, any more than a 1Gbps line would be using. Take a look at all that blue on the map. It seems to signify that this was a waste of time and money.
Basically, I'm all for this great stuff, but until they find a use for it, it's just money wasted when it could be going to places and projects in technology that could actually benefit.
Does anyone remember when Restriction Enzymes were all the rage in molecular biology (which wasn't really even a field back then)?
They were actually banned in Cambridge, MA (home of Harvard and MIT) during the 70s, and now they are used in my Biology Lab courses to teach us how DNA seperates in agarose gel electrophoresis.
Point being: Don't jump to stupid conclusions about the dangers of things.
Are they actually going to make this a Politically Correct type of movie? A Terminatrix? Or did they just need a reason for a sex scene?
It just seems funny. The first movie had an obvious heroine and hero; they both served their roles and made the audience happy by creating a loving relationship while also doing neat action sequences and screaming as a strange, mechanized killer attacked them. But this?
Possible Plot:
Terminatrix Seduction:
The entire plot of the movie rests in the fact that a 20-something male, as commented in the article, has absolutely no power over his... organs... and will fall easily into the hands of an incredily beautiful woman who asks him on a rather cordial date. I don't see how she could lose with this strategy.
Terminatrix-PC:
A new black Conner (to try to promote gender equality) is paired with Jackie Chan and Arnold Schwartz to provide the ultimate in "inclusive" casting. The Terminatrix will have the ability to morph into whatever type of socially unrepresented class happens to present itself, allowing for quick and easy resolution of unsatisfied audience demographic.
How about this.
You set up a simple script that by default, turns off accepting email with attachments on it. When a person in the company NEEDS to view an attachment, the script allows one email with an attachment through to his computer after he fills out a form and submits it to the script (the form is never actually read, but hmph).
This way, anyone who needs to see an attachment does and must know about it before hand. At the same time, it blocks attachment-outlook-stupidity viruses by disallowing them to shoot through the system on a normal basis.
Furthermore, any person IN THE COMPANY who sends an attachment to another person in the company that's rejected by the mail server because the recipient hadn't filled in the form has his or her email account locked for 24 hours to stop the virus from spreading.
Done. Finished. My thoughts.
You know, there was a kid who sat at my lunchtable and babbled incessantly about Linux and his "Linux box". I think he sat home all day and hacked it, which, in laymans terms, means he tried to break into his own system and failed. Sounds poor, if you ask me.
No, but really. Anyone who's tried to teach me the larger part of linux commands has taught me in "code form". In other words, they've tried to teach me how to do everything through the console, and what's worse, they try to add their own, new "terms" for them. A "Flood Ping" is suddenly a "Hurricane River Overflowing of Packets", and you casually ask them what EITHER of them are, and the kid tells you that he's talking about sending large amounts of binary data through his umbilical cord into an unsuspecting system. Right.
I think that schools should consider hiring IT professionals who can teach as well as do IT. It might open up a whole new market of jobs. Open Source software would be a great class, if anyone ever got around to TEACHING it.
It seems to have been created with Microsoft Frontpage. Check out the source.
:))
Ah ha! So Microsoft Frontpage was used to build the hoax! Another terrible reason to hate a terrible company... (just joking
No, really, it appears to be false in many ways. Disregard it completely.
The Treo information page at edigitalstore and their order page says *nothing* about this. Is it for real, or just a decently made hoax?
:(
Anyone have any updates at all?
Here's the original link.
And I wanted one for chanukah, too.
until someone hacks it and puts linux on it? Seems like all geeks do nowadays :)
There's nothing long with Editing something as long as your approve of the rest of it. As soon as you edit something, you've "agreed" that you're taking out material that you, the editor, finds unworthy of your publication - be it a weblog, a book, a magazine, or a television show.
Because of this, the remaining portion is now just as much your work as it is theirs. It's like touching just a single paintbrush to the Mona Lisa: while you can't claim you've painted the Mona Lisa, you could claim that you've done "art". In essense, by altering it, you've created something else, and that represents you and your views.
Now then, back to your blog. I say that no one could hold you libel for posts you didn't edit, but then, there's a problem - namely - that people against the material on your site can ask why you didn't exercise the right to edit the material, and claim that everything represents your opinion if you have the ability to edit and aren't exercising that ability.
Oh well, it's a tough call. Just some feedback.
Does anyone remember going to school in the late 80s, 90s?
Everyone was using an Apple computer to do everything. Everyone learned the Apple Operating System. My parents bought an apple computer so we could do our homework at home. It was our first "PC". This is because apple *donated* the hardware and the software.
But actually, this is what microsoft is trying to do. They're going to donate computers and software and teach children, the new-generation consumer base, to learn their operating system. It's a difficult thing, to unlearn an environment. An operating system is an environment. Microsoft is directly manipulating a ruling.
Actually, I can't say that it would be illegal in a "bar", but in a cybercafe environment, by law in MA at least, you're required to have internet filtering which blocks nudity and other "offensive" content. In a restricted, over 21 environment, perhaps this isn't such an issue, but in a mall or a place with any sort of store window, police complaints and actual orders to shut your business down can be handed out with very little discrimination. I know, I net-admined one for a year.
My friend and I recieved, on one occasion, a visit from the local police department, concerning that children had acceess to our machines and that our machines could be set to display objectionable content. The woman who had filed the complaint did not actually see objectionable content or had an experience where her child did, she merely voiced the possibility that it could happen.
Police seem to take this sort of stuff seriously. I'm not sure why it's any surprise that a government particularly against free speech would have a slightly more aggrevated reaction.
Why wouldn't Osama bin Laden or other said terrorists *disconnect* his computer?
*gasp!* The internet isn't some kind of otherworldly computing neccessity. Your computer runs perfectly fine if you unplug it from the wall. This seems to be like something George Bush would try to do (make a network secure but hire people that run it).
In any case, sure, unplugging your computer would limit its use as a communicative device, but lookie here. What if the computer was routed through a server that only accepted packets of a certain size with a certain encryption standard. In other words, Mr. Evil-Doer's packets go through, the FBIs dont.
This seems like an incredible waste of time. I've got a better idea to shut down telecommunications in Afghanistan et al:
Hit the data transfer at the heart. Screw with the routers and the servers. Sniff there. Individual computers are a ridiculous place to look.
What he's asking for is like asking for poison-free food. Sure, the ovens can be locked and the food can be tested over and over, but the cook is still there.
The only concievable way to do this is to either:
a) Eliminate Government Data Access to All But the Highest Officials (which still poses the same problem, in theory) or
b) Eliminate the network altogether.
Bush is asking for something that isn't possible because social engineering and the "inside job" is the oldest way to hack any system of anything. Hacking didn't start with computers, bank vaults, locks, jewelry stashes... they were all done in the past with inside work.
It's impossible because of human error and human presence.
What's the purpose of starting in winter? Or are they rowing in the Southern Hemisphere? Even so, this seems like a stupid idea.
/., but that's another story.
Rowing over a major ocean during the end of storm season through winter is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. I wish they would think before they do stuff like this.
But I suppose the contestants, I suppose that's what you'd call them, get some sort of rush out of doing crap like this. I just don't understand what kind of rush it is.
Furthermore, I don't understand why sporting news belongs on
Yeah, but here's the real question.
Supposing OnStar can track where your car is, can't it also track acceleration and velocity and all that? I mean, supposing there's a sale at a Bob's Stores. It flashes the Ad.
Now, supposing you slow down and turn into the Bob's Stores parking lot. OnStar, technically, could save this information as specific to your vehicle. An entry in their big database that says "Customer 84392 will respond to advertising in this catagory."
What it all seems like is one big cyber-snoop service, tracking where you really are and advertising towards your patterns. A waste of car battery just like the new limewire ads are a waste of processing power.
Now, OnStar could say they won't do this, but you know it'll happen. It's a perfect advertising scheme. They'd know exactly what kind of driver and shopper you were dependant on what stores and advertisements you listened to and responded to.
Ieshan
Predictor at Large
get released at his packages?
Looks like something that would come out of the arena =P
It says "cheap".
Could industries like bookmakers or publishers use this sort of thing? I'm rather fond of the glowing text on the black background, if you ask me, and it would provide a great alternative to something like a reading light. of course, it'll probably jack the cost of books up. Even though they do claim it'll be "inexpensive".
However, I do think their assumption about 'computer monitors' is silly - right now, they're printing flat pictures, not moving, highly detailed ones.
Well, right, that's a decent guess.
The problem is, you need reproduction with variation. Reproduction on it's own doesn't qualify something as being life.
Without variance in reproduction, something can never evolve. You have to remember that.
Personally, I don't buy the article because it doesn't tell which computers failed the tests. Somehow, I doubt there's any sensitive, highly classified information stored on 95% of government computers - most government workers simply don't have access to that type of data or knowledge.
I'm scared at the fact that someone could report on this with so little attention to detail. It's an article simply designed to scare people into thinking that the US government isn't more prepared than they are.
Or you could use Sarin nerve gas, which inhibits nerve firing, and works every time.
Personally, I don't see the point of nanobots. They're hard to make, they're expensive to make, and they're useless when compared with similar toxins or biochemical agents.
Nerve gas kills invariably, almost instantly. I don't understand why a terrorist would use something else.
Has anyone read 'Snowcrash'? One of the characters has a car-plane-automated-mobile that works this way, he has to make odd sounds to make it move. Claims it doesn't interfere with his normal conversation too much, and that he can do it without thinking after a little practice.
What about not-so-long extinct species?
And then, what about the environmental problems with re-introducing species into environments they obviously can't survive in?
Of course, this isn't neccessarily true, but most species go extinct for a reason. If an animal can't get the food it needs, it isn't going to survive no matter how many times you clone it and make it an animal again. And then, here's another problem: It wont have a parent to imitate.
Most species have their own quirks, I assume, and since everything in life is learned post-birth, would a DoDo bird that lives with a Peacock and has Dodo bird physiology really be a Dodo bird? Would it learn 'Peacock' responses to things?
I'm at Tufts University in Medford, MA. We have sets of core requirements, such as language, sciences, english, math, technology, and others, but only for Liberal Arts. Engineering students have a different set of requirements, focused more around technology, math, and, well, engineering ;)
That all said, I think it's notable that Engineering Students take Engineering Classes and Usually have an 'Engineering Oriented' job. On the other hand, Liberal Arts students often get a job in a field that doesn't neccessarily correspond to their major, and this, I believe is the philosophy behind a 'rounded' education.
This idea that one might go to college simply to become educated - not educated in a particular field - is more the goal behind college in a Liberal Arts education today. Although each student takes a concentration of courses to form a major, all students must diversify themselves and broaden their horizons.
Ieshan